by Robert Reed
immune reaction . We can kill it, but the strength of the germicide is
too great for living tissue to tolerate .”
“Some people seem to be immune .”
“Sure they do—but why?”
“Don’t ask me . I’m not the scientist .”
“Play like one,” Kramer growled . “Here are the facts . The disease
attacks people of all races and ages . So far every one who is attacked
dies . Adult Europeans and Americans appear to be somewhat more
resistant than others on a population basis . Somewhere around sixty
percent of them are still alive, but it’s wiped out better than eighty
percent of some groups . Children get it worse . Right now I doubt if
one percent of the children born during the past ten years are still
alive .”
“It’s awful!” Mary said .
PANDEMIC, by J. F. Bone | 88
“It’s worse than that . It’s extinction . Without kids the race will
die out .” Kramer rubbed his forehead .
“Have you any ideas?”
“Children have less resistance,” Kramer replied . “An adult gets
exposed to a number of diseases to which he builds an immunity .
Possibly one of these has a cross immunity against Thurston’s vi-
rus .”
“Then why don’t you work on that line?” Mary asked .
“Just what do you think I’ve been doing? That idea was put out
months ago, and everyone has been taking a crack at it . There are
twenty-four laboratories working full time on that facet and God
knows how many more working part time like we are . I’ve screened
a dozen common diseases, including the six varieties of the common
cold virus . All, incidentally, were negative .”
“Well—are you going to keep on with it?”
“I have to .” Kramer rubbed his eyes . “It won’t let me sleep . I’m
sure we’re on the right track . Something an adult gets gives him re-
sistance or immunity .” He shrugged . “Tell you what . You run those
bloods out and I’ll go take another look at the data .” He reached into
his lab coat and produced a pipe . “I’ll give it another try .”
“Sometimes I wish you’d read without puffing on that thing,”
Mary said .
“Your delicate nose will be the death of me yet—” Kramer said .
“It’s my lungs I’m worried about,” Mary said . “They’ll probably
look like two pieces of well-tanned leather if I associate with you
for another year .”
“Stop complaining . You’ve gotten me to wear clean lab coats . Be
satisfied with a limited victory,” Kramer said absently, his eyes star-
ing unseeingly at a row of reagent bottles on the bench . Abruptly he
nodded . “Fantastic,” he muttered, “but it’s worth a check .” He left
the room, slamming the door behind him in his hurry .
“That man!” Mary murmured . “He’d drive a saint out of his
mind . If I wasn’t so fond of him I’d quit . If anyone told me I’d fall
in love with a pathologist, I’d have said they were crazy . I wish—”
Whatever the wish was, it wasn’t uttered . Mary gasped and coughed
PANDEMIC, by J. F. Bone | 89
rackingly . Carefully she moved back from the bench, opened a
drawer and found a thermometer . She put it in her mouth . Then she
drew a drop of blood from her forefinger and filled a red and white
cell pipette, and made a smear of the remainder .
She was interrupted by another spasm of coughing, but she
waited until the paroxysm passed and went methodically back to
her self-appointed task . She had done this many times before . It was
routine procedure to check on anything that might be Thurston’s
Disease. A cold, a sore throat, a slight difficulty in breathing—all
demanded the diagnostic check . It was as much a habit as breathing .
This was probably the result of that cold she’d gotten last week,
but there was nothing like being sure . Now let’s see—temperature
99 .5 degrees, red cell count 4½ million . White cell count…oh!
2500…leukopenia! The differential showed a virtual absence of
polymorphs, lymphocytes and monocytes . The whole slide didn’t
have two hundred . Eosinophils and basophils way up—twenty and
fifteen percent respectively—a relative rise rather than an absolute
one—leukopenia, no doubt about it .
She shrugged . There wasn’t much question . She had Thurston’s
Disease . It was the beginning stages, the harsh cough, the slight
temperature, the leukopenia . Pretty soon her white cell count would
begin to rise, but it would rise too late . In fact, it was already too
late . It’s funny, she thought . I’m going to die, but it doesn’t frighten
me . In fact, the only thing that bothers me is that poor Walter is go-
ing to have a terrible time finding things. But I can’t put this place
the way it was . I couldn’t hope to .
She shook her head, slid gingerly off the lab stool and went to
the hall door . She’d better check in at the clinic, she thought . There
was bed space in the hospital now . Plenty of it . That hadn’t been true
a few months ago but the only ones who were dying now were the
newborn and an occasional adult like herself . The epidemic had died
out not because of lack of virulence but because of lack of victims .
The city outside, one of the first affected, now had less than forty
percent of its people left alive . It was a hollow shell of its former
self . People walked its streets and went through the motions of life .
PANDEMIC, by J. F. Bone | 90
But they were not really alive . The vital criteria were as necessary
for a race as for an individual . Growth, reproduction, irritability,
metabolism—Mary smiled wryly . Whoever had authored that hack-
neyed mnemonic that life was a “grim” proposition never knew how
right he was, particularly when one of the criteria was missing .
The race couldn’t reproduce . That was the true horror of Thur-
ston’s Disease—not how it killed, but who it killed . No children
played in the parks and playgrounds . The schools were empty . No
babies were pushed in carriages or taken on tours through the su-
permarkets in shopping carts . No advertisements of motherhood, or
children, or children’s things were in the newspapers or magazines .
They were forbidden subjects—too dangerously emotional to touch .
Laughter and shrill young voices had vanished from the earth to be
replaced by the drab grayness of silence and waiting . Death had
laid cold hands upon the hearts of mankind and the survivors were
frozen to numbness .
It was odd, she thought, how wrong the prophets were . When
Thurston’s Disease broke into the news there were frightened pre-
dictions of the end of civilization . But they had not materialized .
There were no mass insurrections, no rioting, no organized violence .
Individual excesses, yes—but nothing of a group nature . What little
panic there was at the beginning disappeared once people realized
that there was no place to go . And a grim passivity had settled upon
the survivors . Civilization did no
t break down . It endured . The me-
chanics remained intact . People had to do something even if it was
only routine counterfeit of normal life—the stiff upper lip in the face
of disaster .
It would have been far more odd, Mary decided, if mankind had
given way to panic . Humanity had survived other plagues nearly as
terrible as this—and racial memory is long . The same grim patience
of the past was here in the present . Man would somehow survive,
and civilization go on .
It was inconceivable that mankind would become extinct . The
whole vast resources and pooled intelligence of surviving human-
ity were focused upon Thurston’s Disease . And the disease would
PANDEMIC, by J. F. Bone | 91
yield. Humanity waited with childlike confidence for the miracle
that would save it . And the miracle would happen, Mary knew it
with a calm certainty as she stood in the cross corridor at the end
of the hall, looking down the thirty yards of tile that separated her
from the elevator that would carry her up to the clinic and oblivion .
It might be too late for her, but not for the race . Nature had tried
unaided to destroy man before—and had failed . And her unholy al-
liance with man’s genius would also fail .
She wondered as she walked down the corridor if the others who
had sickened and died felt as she did . She speculated with grim
amusement whether Walter Kramer would be as impersonal as he
was with the others, when he performed the post-mortem on her
body . She shivered at the thought of that bare sterile room and the
shining table . Death was not a pretty thing . But she could meet it
with resignation if not with courage . She had already seen too much
for it to have any meaning. She did not falter as she placed a finger
on the elevator button .
Poor Walter—she sighed . Sometimes it was harder to be among
the living . It was good that she didn’t let him know how she felt . She
had sensed a change in him recently . His friendly impersonality had
become merely friendly . It could, with a little encouragement, have
developed into something else . But it wouldn’t now . She sighed
again . His hardness had been a tower of strength . And his bitter gal-
lows humor had furnished a wry relief to grim reality . It had been
nice to work with him . She wondered if he would miss her . Her lips
curled in a faint smile . He would, if only for the trouble he would
have in making chaos out of the order she had created . Why couldn’t
that elevator hurry?
“Mary! Where are you going?” Kramer’s voice was in her ears,
and his hand was on her shoulder .
“Don’t touch me!”
“Why not?” His voice was curiously different . Younger, excited .
“I have Thurston’s Disease,” she said .
He didn’t let go . “Are you sure?”
“The presumptive tests were positive .”
PANDEMIC, by J. F. Bone | 92
“Initial stages?”
She nodded. “I had the first coughing attack a few minutes ago.”
He pulled her away from the elevator door that suddenly slid
open . “You were going to that death trap upstairs,” he said .
“Where else can I go?”
“With me,” he said . “I think I can help you .”
“How? Have you found a cure for the virus?”
“I think so . At least it’s a better possibility than the things they’re
using up there .” His voice was urgent . “And to think I might never
have seen it if you hadn’t put me on the track .”
“Are you sure you’re right?”
“Not absolutely, but the facts fit. The theory’s good.”
“Then I’m going to the clinic . I can’t risk infecting you . I’m a
carrier now . I can kill you, and you’re too important to die .”
“You don’t know how wrong you are,” Kramer said .
“Let go of me!”
“No—you’re coming back!”
She twisted in his grasp . “Let me go!” she sobbed and broke into
a fit of coughing worse than before.
“What I was trying to say,” Dr . Kramer said into the silence that
followed, “is that if you have Thurston’s Disease, you’ve been a car-
rier for at least two weeks . If I am going to get it, your going away
can’t help . And if I’m not, I’m not .”
“Do you come willingly or shall I knock you unconscious and
drag you back?” Kramer asked .
She looked at his face . It was grimmer than she had ever seen it
before . Numbly she let him lead her back to the laboratory .
“But, Walter—I can’t . That’s sixty in the past ten hours!” she
protested .
“Take it,” he said grimly, “then take another . And inhale . Deeply .”
“But they make me dizzy .”
“Better dizzy than dead . And, by the way—how’s your chest?”
“Better . There’s no pain now . But the cough is worse .”
“It should be .”
“Why?”
PANDEMIC, by J. F. Bone | 93
“You’ve never smoked enough to get a cigarette cough,” he said .
She shook her head dizzily . “You’re so right,” she said .
“And that’s what nearly killed you,” he finished triumphantly.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m certain . Naturally, I can’t prove it—yet . But that’s just a
matter of time . Your response just about clinches it . Take a look
at the records . Who gets this disease? Youngsters—with nearly
one hundred percent morbidity and one hundred percent mortality .
Adults—less than fifty percent morbidity—and again one hundred
percent mortality. What makes the other fifty percent immune?
Your crack about leather lungs started me thinking—so I fed the
data cards into the computer and keyed them for smoking versus
incidence . And I found that not one heavy smoker had died of Thur-
ston’s Disease . Light smokers and nonsmokers—plenty of them—
but not one single nicotine addict . And there were over ten thousand
randomized cards in that spot check . And there’s the exact reverse of
that classic experiment the lung cancer boys used to sell their case .
Among certain religious groups which prohibit smoking there was
nearly one hundred percent mortality of all ages!
“And so I thought since the disease was just starting in you,
perhaps I could stop it if I loaded you with tobacco smoke . And it
works!”
“You’re not certain yet,” Mary said . “I might not have had the
disease .”
“You had the symptoms . And there’s virus in your sputum .”
“Yes, but—”
“But, nothing! I’ve passed the word—and the boys in the other
labs figure that there’s merit in it. We’re going to call it Barton’s
Therapy in your honor . It’s going to cause a minor social revolution .
A lot of laws are going to have to be rewritten . I can see where it’s
going to be illegal for children not to smoke . Funny, isn’t it?
“I’ve contacted the maternity ward . They have three babies still
alive upstairs . We get all the newborn in this town, or didn’t you
a smoke chamber for the kids . The head nurse is screaming like a
PANDEMIC, by J. F. Bone | 94
wounded tiger, but she’ll feel better with live babies to care for . The
only bad thing I can see is that it may cut down on her chain smok-
ing . She’s been worried a lot about infant mortality .
“And speaking of nurseries—that reminds me . I wanted to ask
you something .”
“Yes?”
“Will you marry me? I’ve wanted to ask you before, but I didn’t
dare . Now I think you owe me something—your life . And I’d like to
take care of it from now on .”
“Of course I will,” Mary said . “And I have reasons, too . If I marry
you, you can’t possibly do that silly thing you plan .”
“What thing?”
“Naming the treatment Barton’s . It’ll have to be Kramer’s .”
PANDEMIC, by J. F. Bone | 95
WINGS OF THE BLACK
DEATH, by Norvell Page
Originally published in The Spider, December 1933.
Chapter 1
The Spider Returns
Richard Wentworth, immaculate in evening attire, wandered with
swift, deceptive carelessness among the night blackened shrubs,
stealing away from the Police Commissioner’s stately mansion . Be-
hind him rang the gay laughter of society at play, but in Wentworth’s
eyes was only grimness and an alert watchfulness .
If those revelers knew as he did the fearful skeleton that leered at
their feast, their laughter would turn to screams of horror!
Suddenly Wentworth checked his advance, halted behind the
spire of an arborvitae . He merged with its shadow, quick hands
turning up satin lapels to hide the white glimmer of his shirt . Just
beyond the tree loomed the pacing figure of a policeman swinging
a nightstick . But without pause, or glance toward the arborvitae, the
bluecoat plodded on with heavy, heedless feet .… He would never
know the Spider had passed in the night .
A wry smile twisted Wentworth’s mouth as he catfooted on . This
man was a guardian of the law . Because justice must wait on such
men, Wentworth tonight had turned his back upon gayety; leaving
the side of the woman he loved, to grope through the vicious under-
world in hopes of grappling with that mocking skeleton at the feast;
